


Tomorrow's Another Day

by cosmic_llin



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 06:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12550752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/pseuds/cosmic_llin
Summary: Michael wishes she'd done things differently.Episode tag for S01E05, Choose Your Pain.





	Tomorrow's Another Day

Michael was actually getting used to Tilly’s snoring. It was sort of soothing, like white noise. It had become unobtrusive enough that, lying awake late as she often did, it was a while before she realised that she wasn’t hearing it.

Once she’d realised, she lay still in the darkness for a few more minutes, trying to decide what to do.

‘Tilly?’ she said at last. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

‘Just... thinking about everything that happened today. Wondering if the tardigrade is ok out there.’

‘Me too.’

Tilly made a little affirmative sound.

Michael was trying so hard not to like anything about this place, but Tilly was testing her resolve. It wasn’t that she hadn’t found her irritating at first - if nothing else her relentless good humour was grating to Michael, who’d spent the last several months in prison with nothing to do except grieve and second-guess every decision she’d ever made in her life, and wasn’t really in a mood to be friendly.

But she kept thinking about Tilly’s wide-eyed delight as they freed the tardigrade, Tilly’s willingness to help Michael even when she hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Tilly’s scientific curiosity, her sense of wonder about the universe. It reminded Michael a little of herself, before all of this.

Captain Georgiou would have liked her.

Michael thought about telling Tilly that, but she found that the words wouldn’t come.

‘I’m glad we set it free,’ she said instead.

‘I know,’ said Tilly. ‘I hate the thought that we hurt it. Stuff like that… that’s not why I wanted to join Starfleet.’

‘I bet when you signed up you didn’t think you’d be in a war before you’d even graduated from the Academy,’ said Michael.

‘That’s for sure,’ said Tilly, and Michael could hear the sadness in her voice. ‘I had so many ideas about what I might do. You know, I put in for a final-year placement on the Shenzhou? The Enterprise and the Lexington were my backup choices. And then... the war started and I had to go where I was sent, and that was here.’

‘I’m truly sorry,’ said Michael.

‘Hey,’ said Tilly. ‘It wasn’t your fault. I think the Klingons were coming, one way or another.’

It was the first time anyone had said that to Michael. And she thought Tilly might actually mean it. She swallowed the lump in her throat.

‘You would have fit in on the Shenzhou,’ she said.

‘That’s a really nice thing to say,’ said Tilly. ‘I hope so.’

Michael could picture it. Captain Georgiou always welcomed new officers to the ship personally, and she took special care with the ones straight from the Academy, looking up their records and talking knowledgeably to them about their studies and their areas of interest. Tilly would have gone into the ready room on her first day aboard and come out an hour later with her eyes shining, ready to follow Captain Georgiou to the ends of the universe. Michael had seen it before. She’d _been_ it before.

And right now she couldn’t shake the feeling that Captain Georgiou would be disappointed in her.

Not about the mutiny. She’d already gone over that about a million times, and she still did every night when she tried to sleep. But about this new situation, about what had happened with the tardigrade.

If she’d still been on the Shenzhou, if Captain Georgiou had been alive, she would have gone to her the moment she thought the creature might be in distress, and Captain Georgiou would have stopped the experiments. But this time she’d just watched and waited, and a living, feeling creature had been hurt because she hadn’t helped it in time. She’d let the tardigrade endure enough jumps to almost kill it, and when she’d tried to help she’d been confined to quarters. And she hadn’t attempted to escape, hadn’t banged on the doors and yelled until they stopped hurting it.

Stamets had done what she should have done. But the last time she’d disobeyed orders, she’d ruined everything.

Back on the Shenzhou, she’d thought she was finally getting to a place where she could balance logic and emotion, use them in concert to help her make good decisions instead of veering too far in one direction or another. But these days her compass spun wildly, she never quite felt like she knew what to do any more. Watching the tardigrade, seeing it suffering and scared, she’d imagined what Captain Georgiou might do. She would have stopped it, no matter what. Michael was certain of that.

But she had been certain back at the binary stars, and look how that had turned out.

There was a reason Starfleet officers were supposed to follow orders. Captain Georgiou had expected her to, but she had also made it clear to Michael that there were some circumstances in which disobeying orders was the correct moral choice.

Michael didn’t trust herself any more to know which circumstances those were. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that if Philippa had been in her place, she would have done things differently, orders be damned.

‘Michael?’ said Tilly, into the silence. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m just… wondering what I could have done differently.’

Michael heard Tilly shift in bed, and when she next spoke she sounded closer, as if she was facing her.

‘It doesn’t help, that sort of thinking. You did what you did. What happened, happened. The universe didn’t end and we learned things for next time.’

Michael sighed. ‘Maybe.’

‘Definitely. Go to sleep, Michael. Tomorrow’s another day.’

‘All right. Goodnight, Sylvia.’

‘Goodnight, Michael.’

After a few minutes, the gentle sound of Tilly’s snoring began. Michael lay and listened to it for a while, and then she fell asleep.


End file.
